Chris Coles Talk at Thammasat University on Some of Bangkok & Southeast Asia Noir's Source Material

The Bangkok Noir and Southeast Asia Noir context is fertile and deep and provides a rich almost infinite source of materials, ideas, stories and visual images for all sorts of writers, musicians, film-makers and artists (and journalists).

While there's a lesser or greater degree of noir everywhere in the world, I think each country and area has their own version of noir, with their own characteristics, cast of characters, colors, music and ambiance.

In the case of Southeast Asia and Bangkok noir, in my view at least, some of the characteristics often used, and sometimes mis-used, as "Raw Material" for Noir creation, are the following:

An atmosphere of fatalism, acceptance and passivity in the face of adverse circumstances, no matter how unjust, unfair and unpleasant those circumstance might be.

Resignation in the face of unavoidable Karmic burdens acquired in past lives and deeds, burdens from which there is no escape.

A world where endemic corruption is not only considered  to be "normal" and "permanent" but in some cases, "essential".

Double helpings of impunity, disenfranchisement and rule by Big Men. 

An absence of meaningful Rule of Law.

Almost no guaranteed rights for the general population, whether unassailable property rights, equality under the Law, the right to equal opportunity and social mobility, or what are sometimes referred to as "Civil Rights" or "Constitutional Rights".

Individuals portrayed in much of Southeast Asia and Bangkok noir are often arbitrarily subject to state and Big Man violence, selective and biased law enforcement, in extreme instances, even assassination and disappearances.

In many of the noir stories, songs, films and art, Southeast Asia and Bangkok are sometimes, but not always, portrayed as worlds in which some of the inhabitants accept their own powerlessness or impotence in the face of arbitrary, unrestrained authority. 

Accept that they have little or no recourse in the face of widespread injustice.

Accept that large and endemic commercial sex industries as well as rampant illegal drug industries are deeply and permanently embedded in the structure of their societies and that these socially corrosive industries often operate with the complicity and are sometimes even under the control of state authorities as well as the various Big Men.

Accept that, in certain geographic areas and locations, there are organized child or underage sex businesses, accompanied by inevitable corrosive impacts and consequences.

Accept that, even in year 2014, there still exists indentured servitude and even outright slave labor, an ongoing trafficking/indentured-related movement of men, women, and children across international borders.

Accept that there is large-scale trade in illegal and counterfeit goods and weapons, drugs and narcotics.

Accept that there are and always will be huge disparities in incomes, living standards, asset ownership, etc. etc.

For the various writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists working in Bangkok and Southeast Asia who are inspired by or looking for noir subjects and themes, there seems to be an abundance of noir material with which to work.

Playing a central role in all this surplus of noir is, of course, the widespread and sometimes industrial scale nightlife/commercial sex industry that exists in Bangkok and throughout Southeast Asia.

And while almost every country and every part of our world has at least some nightlife/commercial sex industry, what is unusual in Southeast Asia and Bangkok is not only the sheer scale but also the high level of creativity and resources brought to bear.

The use of multiple, overlapping music tracks.

An astute, often very creative use of casting, costumes, lighting, neon, signage and dynamic colors. 

The seemingly endless supply of delicious and aromatic cuisine that accompanies and is present in many SE Asia nightlife venues.

An often warm and inviting ambiance that is an integral part of how the nightlife is delivered and consumed.

And of course, the Southeast Asia and Bangkok nightlife's most essential core ingredient, without which it could no longer exist, the hundreds of thousands of young and attractive females, males and ladyboys, many with a surprisingly high level of intelligence, wit, style and charm.

There's definitely a kind of power that radiates out from the Bangkok and Southeast Asia nightlife and a magnetic noir that is unique, unusual and often compelling.

Something that, year after year, draws in millions of people, workers and consumers, from every walk of life, every part of the world, every level of life.

Most of my own paintings are drawn from this richness and noir power.

The girls, boys, ladyboys. The customers, staff and infrastructure.

The music, lighting, neon and signage.

The ambiance, the stories, the lies.

The beauty, poignancy, tragedy.  The hundreds of thousands of lost opportunities.

The alienation, dis-connection and objectification.

I often wander through the Bangkok Noir looking for inspiration. 

I find it to be a rich source of  ideas, characters, costumes, situations, colors, stories and lighting.

I hope I've managed to capture and convey at least some of it's myriad levels of beauty, ugliness, horror, sadness and joy.

The virtues, deficits and defects of some of the people who inhabit it. 

And some of the dreams, nightmares and dilemmas of mankind's existence on our post-modern and globalized version of Planet Earth.

German Expressionism and the Noir Vision in Southeast Asia

 “Spirit House Japanese KTV” – Chris Coles

(....the written version of a talk given at Meta House in Phnom Penh Friday, February 22nd as part of the Opening for the NIGHT VISIONS show of paintings from the Bangkok Night...)

 I am going to talk tonight about German Expressionism and how I see its relationship to the cultural movement known as South East Asia Noir.

I’m not speaking as an academic or art historian but as an artist, about what it is I find so interesting and like about the Expressionist vision and how I use it in my own Expressionist-style noir paintings set in South East Asia.

Since I can remember, I’ve always liked Expressionist art and my favorite paintings are pretty much all by the various Expressionists.

Mostly German like George Grosz, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix, Kirchner, Beckmann, Schmidt-Rotluff, Jawlensky but also a few others like Ensor, Schiele and Kokoschka.

“Metropolis” – George Grosz

I find Expressionist paintings interesting, the subjects and scenes,  the use of strong and often disharmonious colors, distorted images,  the use of artificial night-time lighting rather than daytime sunshine and the often rough primitive technique.

Studying Expressionist paintings has been an important and crucial element in shaping my own version of an “Expressionist style”.

Midnite Patpong” – Chris Coles

But the power and reach of the Expressionist vision has never just been about “style” and “technique”.  Part of the Expressionist vision’s allure has also been its emphasis on at least some kind of “content”, “story” or “narrative”, its ability to relate in some way, even if indirectly and opaquely, to the social conditions and circumstances of the larger society.

I think it’s interesting that Expressionist art in the 1900 to 1930 or so time frame in Germany blossomed amidst a period of tremendous social change and chaos.  During a period when traditional social structures were rapidly disintegrating and in the context of the large-scale slaughter of millions of people that took place in Europe in and around World War One, much of which personally touched and dramatically impacted on the lives of the Expressionist artists themselves.

While these circumstances are not the same as the circumstances in South East Asia over the last fifty years, it seems to me that there are similarities to the often violent transformation and rapid, disruptive changes that have been taking place throughout South East Asia in the last half-century.

Felixmuller

Large scale industrialization and infrastructure development, immense capital formation and wealth accumulation, massive population shifts from rural areas to cities, disintegration of traditional social structures and the globalization of millions of previously somewhat isolated people and cultures.

All of this has created consequences, some good some bad, and has often been accompanied by very high level of violence and an immense amount of physical destruction.

“Explosion” – George Grosz

In the 50 year time period 1963 to the present, in Southeast Asia, millions and millions of people have been killed or have died as the result, directly and indirectly, of large-scale organized violence, fraternal, internal and external.

Clearly, there are links between Expressionist art and the social and political circumstances of the Central European world of the early 1900’s within which it was created.

Just as there are links between my own work, as well as the work of other artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers working in present-day Southeast Asia, and the social and political circumstances of the societies in which they live.

“Rainbow Agogo” – Chris Coles

That’s not to say, these links between art and the broader society and social structure are necessarily didactic, straight-forward or completely clear.  Nor should they be.

But these connections are nevertheless there.

 

 “Songs from the Noir” Album/CD Cover

So how does the Expressionist vision I’ve been describing relate to South East Asia Noir, an artistic and cultural movement which includes various writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists who are making use of modern Southeast Asia as a setting for their books, fiction and non-fiction, songs, movies and paintings?

• Writers like Federico Ferrara, the author of the non-fiction book Thailand Unhinged, a brutal analysis of Thailand’s present-day political scene; 
• Christopher G. Moore whose Calvino series, especially the one set in early 1990’s Phnom Penh, Zero Hour in Phnom Penh, is pure noir; 
• John Burdett and his series of noir detective stories set in South East Asia based around the character of a Thai policeman named Sonchai Jitpleecheep; 
• Jake Needham’s various South East Asia-based thrillers; 
• Tim Hallinan and his Poke Rafferty series;
• Cleo Odzier’s harrowing Patpong Sisters; or Stephen Leather’s classic noir novel from the Bangkok Night titled Private Dancer;
• The Phnom Penh-based music group KROM and their recent album/CD, Songs from the Noir;
• The original Bangkok Dangerous film by the Pang Brothers and the more recent film True Skin, a short but powerful portrayal of Bangkok in a brutal noir future by the talented young director Stephan Zlotescu;
• Some of the Thai artists like Chatchai Puipia, Vasan Sitthiket and Anupong Chantorn;
• Peter Klashorst, a Dutch artist based in Phnom Penh;
• The German photographer Ralf Tooten;
• Andrew MacGregor Marshall, the hard-hitting ex-Reuters journalist whose explosive book, ThaiStory, on the history of the Thai monarchy, has created endless controversy and outrage.
• Nick Nostitz who has done two seminal books of photos and text on the ongoing Thai political battles as well as the brilliant ultra-noir photo essay set in Patpong in the early 1990’s called Patpong: Bangkok’s Twilight Zone; 
  
• And my own paintings, many of which are set in the vast, colorful and often very noir setting of the Bangkok Night.

“Ratchada Poseidon” – Chris Coles

All of these writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists seem to be drawn to and make use of at least some of the following elements, circumstances, characterizations and ambiance drawn from the noir side of modern Southeast Asia.

A widespread fatalism, a kind of passive acceptance of one’s circumstances, no matter how unjust, unfair and unpleasant those circumstances might be.

“Tuk Tuk Guy Phnom Penh” – Chris Coles

A resignation in the face of unavoidable Karmic burdens acquired in past lives and deeds, burdens from which there is no escape.

An acceptance of a world and social system where power is often exercised in arbitrary untransparent ways, often in shadows, hidden by darkness, away from sunlight.

A world where endemic corruption is not only considered to be “normal” and “permanent” but even “essential”.

In most of these artistic works, there always seems to be double helpings of Impunity, disenfranchisement, South East Asia Big Men, a complete lack of any meaningful Rule of Law, almost no actual rights inherently belonging to the individual.

Whether property rights, equality under the law, the right to opportunity and social mobility, the right to “civil rights” or “constitutional” rights

Quite the opposite.

Individuals are frequently and arbitrarily subject to state and Big Man violence, selective and biased law enforcement, sometimes even assassination and disappearances.

“Hindu goddess Kali Phnom Penh” – Chris Coles

In these noir stories, songs, films and paintings, the world of South East Asia is often portrayed as a world in which most of the inhabitants accept their own powerlessness or impotence in the face of arbitrary and unrestrained authority, accept that they have little or no recourse in the face of widespread injustice.

Accept that large and endemic commercial sex as well as illegal drug industries are deeply and permanently embedded in the structure of their societies and that these socially corrosive industries often operate with the complicity and are sometimes even under the control of state authorities as well as the various Big Men.

Accept that, in certain geographic areas, there are organized child or underage sex businesses accompanied by inevitable social impacts and consequences.

Accept that, even in year 2013, there is indentured and sometimes slave labor, ongoing trafficking of men, women, children and babies.

Accept that there is large-scale trafficking of illegal and counterfeit goods, of weapons of all kinds as well as various drugs and narcotics.

That there are and always will be huge disparities in incomes, living standards, asset ownership, etc. etc

“Boys Town BKK” – Chris Coles

Altogether, for the various writers, musicians, filmmakers and artists working in Southeast Asia who are inspired by and/or looking for noir subjects and themes, there seems to be no shortage of available material.

Unlike Impressionism which often dealt mainly with sunshine, pretty flowers and the illusion or dream of “happiness”, the Expressionist vision seems to have an ability to incorporate, deal with and process all the noir stuff, the “unhappy” goings-on.

Often with an almost wild enthusiasm, using some form of the rugged, sometimes downright ugly and often impolite or rude Expressionist style, combined with vibrant, off-kilter, even putrid colors and contrast.

Bangkok After Hours – Chris Coles

In the early days of the Expressionist movement in Central Europe, many Expressionist paintings were scorned as being way too “ugly”, too disturbing, too disconcerting, and just all around “unpleasant”.

Art critics, government officials and even ordinary people accused the Expressionists of not only being despicable, degenerate and disgusting, but also in desperate need of “drawing lessons”.

But, over time, in some weird almost inexplicable way, these very same “incredibly distasteful, ugly and disturbing” Expressionist paintings, sometimes but not always, become “beautiful”, even “important”, and are now presented to an adoring public in some of the world’s most prestigious museums, bought and sold at auctions for millions of dollars by some of the world’s most cunning billionaires.

No one quite knows why, not even the art historians or famous art critics.  It’s kind of a mystery.  Maybe it’s some kind of natural and organic cultural cleansing process.

Part of what’s interesting and valuable about art is that it explores and makes accessible areas of our lives, world, feelings and perceptions that might be distasteful, ambiguous, hidden or partially hidden, not easy and, perhaps even impossible, to fully understand.

“Fishbowl Ratchada” – Chris Coles

At the end of the day, art provides us with a place where, for a few moments at least, we can put aside our words, daily worries and various “fixed” ideas and viewpoints and absorb the colors and shapes, the relations and possible meanings between all the colors and shapes and, without physical risk or danger, let ourselves be drawn into the world of the painting with our thoughts and feelings free to wander wherever.

"Bangkok’s Sex Industry – A Movie In Paintings" Khmer440.com piece by Alex Watts

This is the first part of an interview with Bangkok Noir painter Chris Coles whose new show Night Vision opens at 6pm on Friday at Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd, Phnom Penh. He will give a talk on “German Expressionism And The Noir Vision In SE Asia”, explaining his work, and there will be music from Phnom Penh-based group KROM.

Artist and ex-Hollywood filmmaker Chris Coles moved to Bangkok by accident. He was working on Cutthroat Island – a movie listed by Guinness World Records as the biggest box office flop of all time – and decided to stay after it bombed.

Attracted by the vibrancy and grotesque splendour of Thailand’s dark side, he’s spent the past 17 years portraying the doomed, illusionary desires, and savage reality of what he calls the biggest sex show on earth. He depicts his noir vision of haunting smiles and predatory men in vivid Expressionist-style portraits – following in the footsteps of artists like Toulouse-Lautrec who depicted the lives of prostitutes in Paris and Berlin almost a century before.

Indeed, Coles says there are a lot of similarities between the two eras. France and Germany were going through a period of massive transition and industrialisation, the same movement from farm to urban life as has happened in booming SE Asia, creating a new Montmartre in places like Bangkok’s Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza.

As he sits down to talk about Night Vision, his forthcoming exhibition in Phnom Penh, he views the darkness and edgy, neon disassociation of Bangkok’s red light districts through a film director’s lens.

“It’s all about the illusion of excitement,” he says. “When you walk into that world, you’re inside the movie and you forget who you are for a few hours. Everyone’s smiling and everything’s hunky dory – you’re in the middle of a great big party up until the moment when you run out of money, then it’s ‘get out of the way, the next customer needs to sit where you’re sitting…’

“People sometimes think, ‘oh it’s real, she’s really my girlfriend, everyone’s really having fun, this is great, I love it’. The instant they run out of money, the smiles evaporate instantly, because it’s show business. And in order to be there you need to buy the ticket to go to the movie…”

Just as stories in the noir movement can never have happy endings, there are very few in his subjects as well. There are the high-class prostitutes who live luxurious lifestyles with their own apartments, expensive cars, and millionaire customers. But they make up less than 1% of the reality, he says. The rest live painful, hopeless, sad lives beneath the smiles – often blighted by alcoholism as they down lady drinks seven nights a week.

The usual story is peasant girl from an impoverished region, usually Isan, gets pregnant, the father leaves, the child is looked after by the grandmother, as the girl washes off the dirt of the farm, jumps on the bus to Bangkok, and sends home money every month by selling her body. Many of the girls in Bangkok have had 3,000 to 4,000 customers, he says. Girls in Soi Cowboy as many as 5,000 in 10 years. “The girls that manage to get through it without getting destroyed are like Spartacus, they have very strong will power,” he says. Such is the cost, tens of thousands of new bar girls are needed from the provinces every year.

He has less sympathy for the customers – who range in his paintings from tourists straight off the plane, their faces smeared with lust, to the old hands who know the scene, to the demonic American lawyer who takes two girls “rough and crude, acting out his power.” Loose change for him, but for them enough to pay three months’ rent, and their children’s school fees for a year.

Some customers never go back, unable to leave the movie until their money or health runs out and then “disappear” into the bowels of the city. Many are left heart-broken, their lives ruined, but he says they were accidents waiting to happen and arrived “damaged, with a deficit”.

“There’s a dysfunctionality in a certain way, and no matter what was going to happen in his life, it wasn’t going to be a happy ending,” says the US-born artist. “Maybe the unhappy ending was expedited by coming to SE Asia and the whole thing got accelerated. Him getting bankrupted and ruined in a year – instead of 15 years in Huddersfield.

“But I think that problem is really not the girl’s problem. It’s not a problem she created. She and her family need money, they need to go up, they live in a system where it’s almost impossible to go up. So they’re not going to turn down the chance to go up. He has a deficit that somehow the West has no way to service so he drifts over here.”

But he says the typical portrayal of sex tourists as white men with beer bellies is a “trailing remnant of the market” and the customer base has changed dramatically over the past five to ten years – and the cast, costumes, and setting in Bangkok’s never-ending movie have adjusted accordingly.

“It’s all about China now, with a middle class of 200 to 300 million people, a few hours flight away, which is why they’re giving them visas on arrival – one of the few countries in the world to do so,” he says. “There is a very wealthy class of modern Asians now – and Thais are designing the movie experience accordingly…” He says the second biggest customers are Malaysian men, followed by Japanese, Korean, Russian, Iranian, and European – and the city has “a little bit of something” for all of them.

When I question him about the morality of the sex industry, he draws a huge distinction between trafficking – “girls tied to a bed in a fishing port” – and women who work voluntarily in bars. He also believes drug tourism – which he says is what all backpackers are about in Cambodia and Laos – is far more corrosive to society.

“For me the moral issue is less than the potential issue,” he adds. “What I see in the Bangkok night is a huge amount of nice, young girls whose potentials are completely lost so the really rich Thai people can have more money. A lot of them have tremendous potentials and could be doing something else besides getting cum in the face or fucked up the arse. If they were educated, trained, lived in a different society, they would be doing something else. That potential is lost forever.

“In South Korea, they were poor and had a huge sex industry up until the 60s, and as a government policy they decided they were going to educate all the women. And now almost no South Korea women work as prostitutes. They don’t choose to fuck people for a living anymore – because it’s not pleasant work. Thailand is not a poor country like Cambodia, they could decide to educate everybody, but they don’t want that – they want serfs…”

http://www.khmer440.com/k/2013/02/bangkoks-sex-industry-a-movie-in-paintings/

Young English Teacher in the Bangkok Night

"Young English Teacher in the Bangkok Night" - Chris Coles

He teaches English at Bangkok's most exclusive private school, helping kids from the richest families in Thailand get into top universities in the U.S.  His circle of friends includes other Expat teachers from the U.S., England, Canada and Australia, all earning 10 to 20 times the average yearly wage of a Thai person, all living inside the Young Expat Bubble, many with wives or girlfriends who are also Expats and who work day and night to keep their Expat husbands and boyfriends safe and on a tight leash.

His Thai friends are all from rich families, hi-so kids, graduates of universities in the U.S., England and Australia, born into lives of privilege, impunity and entitlement.

He has yet to become contaminated by the surrounding darkness of Southeast Asia Noir, the bars, the girls, the gangsters, trafficking, extortion, corruption, any drugs other than weed.  He carries with him an air of moral certitude and seems confident of his own good intent, immune from degeneracy, degradation and temptation.

Hopefully, he will complete his Bangkok stint without straying outside the Bubble of his pre-conceptions, received ideas and righteousness and make it back to the States with his original personality and character still intact, carrying with him as souvenirs of his Southeast Asia adventure, many photos.